


cut and print it

by renquise



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe, Filmmaking AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:27:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik captures Altaïr flying through the air in Argentina, in Turkey, in Egypt, and he can see the film coming together in the smooth lines of his limbs every time he leaps and rolls across a rooftop. </p><p>(A ridiculous filmmaking AU where Malik is a director and Altaïr is a stuntman/actor.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	cut and print it

“I can’t afford you,” Malik says bluntly, running his hand through his hair and trying not to think of budget sheets. 

Finding funding for ridiculous, ambitious passion projects is nigh-impossible, especially when you’ve got a very, very specific idea of what you want to do and a perfectionist streak, but if there’s one thing he’s learned to do over the years, it’s to squeeze out every cent from a budget that would make any reasonable director cry and resign themselves to stunts done by the producer’s nephew who did gymnastics in middle school. He’s good at convincing people, in short, but he feels his carefully-constructed series of arguments topple over slowly when that whole negotiation path gets knocked out from under him.

“No, but I’ll do it anyways--you want to do this one right, don’t you?” Altaïr says when he looks up from the script and the concept work, sitting back in his chair. It’s said with all the assurance of someone who knows that he’s good—the best in the business, if Malik were one for ego-stroking—and that Malik could take another stuntman or actor, but that it wouldn’t be the same. He’s probably also aware that it’s infuriating.

Malik opens and closes his mouth a few times, considers punching him in the face, which definitely wasn’t part of his original negotiation strategy, decides that whatever satisfaction gained by it would be short-lived, at best, and settles for saying, "Oh,” very intelligently. “Well, I was thinking of going to Robert with this one, maybe. I hear he’s doing good work, lately.”

“You won’t,” Altair says easily, and Malik reconsiders the appeal of short-lived satisfaction. “Robert? Really? He isn’t good at this kind of stuff, you know—not his specialty.” 

Malik has to resist the temptation to hitch his eyebrows higher. Altair’s expression is casual, confident as always, but—Malik settles back into his chair, and Altair rolls forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his fingers poised on the script. He wants the job, Malik realizes, and it sure isn’t for the money.

It’s infuriating, but it’s then, maybe, that Malik starts thinking that it can really happen. 

\--

Even when that’s settled, there’s still all the preliminaries to go through before they can start shooting—costumes and sets and planning and everything that makes the film real.

When Altaïr steps into the first costume, his bearing shifts, settling into the stitches and taking a few steps that compensate for the swing of a scabbard at his side like he’s borne it at his side for a long, long time. 

He stretches and tries a few passes with the sword, and then insists on using the hero sword for everything, naturally, because Malik apparently didn't have enough liabilities to insure.

Scheduling shooting is a giant clusterfuck once they get past the studio, to put it mildly, when Malik is trying to get jobs that pay well enough for a salary for a good crew, but have enough leeway built in to take some time for a few days of shooting, but Altaïr comes every time Malik calls from whatever locations he can wrangle.

He’s woken Altaïr up in the middle of the night a few times, time zones lost in the excitement of having a crew and a camera and a few days to spare once he’s done with a commercial. 

“Sorry for waking you up,” he says grudgingly, after telling Altaïr to get his ass over to India, because there’s this reservoir that he wants to use for a scene in the second half. 

Altaïr yawns. “Just let me just wrap this job first. What time is it over there, anyway?”

“...Mid-afternoon.” There’s sweat dripping down the back of his neck, even in the shade, and the light is amazing, all sharp-edged shadows that cut the frame into geometric shapes. It’ll be difficult to work with, so he’ll probably need reflectors and a couple of other things, but he’ll be able to swing it, somehow. The effect will be worth it. He finds himself gesturing at the reservoir, even though Altaïr can’t see it, carving out the action and the slow camera sweep.

“Right.” Altaïr sounds like he’s dropping back off even as he speaks, and his voice is sleep-fogged and disarming in Malik’s ear. “I’ll get the next flight over.” 

He would feel guiltier, but there’s far too much restrained glee in Altaïr’s voice when he wakes Malik at three in the morning to tell him that he’s on the tarmac.

“Someone’s already done the sudoku in the in-flight magazine, but do you know a five-letter word for ‘peace and quiet’?”

“‘S-l-e-e-p.’“ Malik grunts into his cheap hotel pillow. “Maybe ‘offing you with my mind and hoping the flight attendants hide the body in the cargo compartment,’ if you have some extra boxes.”

Altaïr makes a considering noise over the phone. “If I loop it back into number fifteen—“

“Glad I could help,” Malik says, and he thinks he hangs up, but he doesn’t remember falling asleep. When he wakes up the next morning, his phone is still open on his pillow, so he just slaps at it and hopes that there isn’t going to be a giant charge on his next phone bill. 

There’s a completed crossword sitting by his coffee when he comes down for breakfast—in pen, because of course Altair does the crossword in pen—and a helpful arrow running off the side of the page and onto the back of the torn-out page, pointing out “Five Tips for Stress Reduction,” “6. Not killing your lead actor/stunt man by ‘accidental’ means for the insurance payout because seriously that is some Double Indemnity shit right there.”

“If you were to meet an unfortunate end on the film set, it would probably be a), entirely your fault, and b), for the sheer satisfaction of it, not the insurance payout,” Malik tells him later, at the reservoir.

“Oh, that’s a comfort,” Altair says, stretching out his calf and looking annoyingly non-jet-lagged when he bounces on his toes.

They get the footage they need at the reservoir, though Altaïr nearly gets heatstroke, because he’s an idiot who doesn’t know when to stop. It feels completely ridiculous to hold a parasol over his head and press another water bottle on him, but it's either that or sit on him to prevent him from keeling over into the depths of the reservoir, so Malik feels like it's a pretty good trade.

\--

It’s pretty much a granted that they’re going to sleep in a lot of terrible hotels and have every visa problem imaginable, but getting food poisoning and spending the next few days laid up and rejecting the contents of his stomach is a new one. 

Malik’s crew is good enough to get what they need and bring the dailies to him in bed when he insists on it, but it still has the privilege of being the most miserable experience Malik has had the opportunity to experience. Altaïr is still in costume when he brings the dailies up to him, his sword bumping against his hip and his stage makeup still on, which makes him look like he lost a fight with the disreputable part of town and a few staircases besides. Several times. 

Malik wouldn’t put it past Altaïr to actually throw himself into a fight for verisimilitude’s sake, because as much as he’s careful and deliberate when he’s doing stunts with other people, he’s also far too willing to throw his body into danger for the sake of getting a better shot, in a way that sometimes makes Malik wonder how he’s lasted this long in the profession.

“Are you trying to scare the hotel staff?” Malik asks, sitting up very slowly and ignoring the pounding in his head in favour of the laptop that Altaïr hands him. “Or maybe get me arrested for assumed assault? I think it’s about the only thing that hasn’t happened, to be honest, so I appreciate your help in trying to win shooting disaster bingo.”

“Thought they were giving me weird looks,” Altaïr says, touching own face in brief surprise and shrugging. “I’m pretty sure I still look less like death than you do, by the way. Oh, and about the dolly cam tracks—“

Malik buries his face in his hands and tries not to throw up all over the laptop, because losing the footage would mean that he’d have to accept that there’s some force in the universe that doesn’t want this film to exist. “Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Altaïr shrugs and gets him a glass of water.

The footage all looks good, thankfully, no matter what happened to the dolly cam tracks.

\--

At another point, Malik finds himself up a tree with the steadicam strapped to him (the camera operator had been unavailable) and Altaïr, and a hippopotamus at the base, looking particularly unfriendly. They decide, after some debating, that chucking branches down at the hippopotamus was probably a bad idea, and even get down with the camera intact, god knows how.

Those aren’t the hard days, though. The hard days are the ones that don’t seem to produce anything, where everything is technically perfect, where there hasn’t been some horrible accident with the cameras, where everything goes smoothly, and yet, there isn’t anything worth preserving on camera.

It’s those days that Malik starts doubting, and someone once told him that there’s no place for doubt in show business, that you can’t give in to the nagging question of whether you’re saying anything worth watching—you just have to believe that the answer is yes.

They’re losing light, and they only have this site for a few hours. Malik already had to bribe a few local officials to let him shoot here, and if they don’t get it now, it’s never. And he keeps looking at the footage, and it’s all fucking terrible. 

“You’re not—“ Malik rubs at his forehead and grits his teeth. “You’re not giving me anything. There’s nothing there.”

For a moment, Altaïr looks as though he might punch him, his face growing dark as he catches his breath again. 

“Maybe you’re just not filming it right. Maybe—“ Altair says, and stops himself. Rolls his shoulders and sets his jaw. “I’ll do it again. Make sure you get it this time.”

“Don’t do it again. Do it better,” Malik grits out. They’re all fucking exhausted, Malik knows, but he can’t just let it go. He has to be that asshole director, just for now.

Altaïr’s lips twist, but he breathes in, stretches his legs and does the scene. 

Does it better. Perfect, even, though Malik doesn’t say so until he’s got a few more takes. When he says they’re done, Altaïr turns on his heel and doesn’t come back until later in the evening.

Malik doesn’t apologize, and neither does Altaïr, but Altaïr sits down in front of the dailies with him, and Malik knows it’s understood when Altaïr looks at the last few takes and says that it looks good.

It’s a frightening thing, when something goes from being your solitary vision—vision is such a dramatic word, and Malik has no use for dramatics, but it encapsulates, somehow, that nagging, insistent image that sticks in your mind and that demands to be told—to something that infects others; when they begin caring as much as you do. 

He captures Altaïr flying through the air in Argentina, in Turkey, in Egypt, and he can see the film coming together in the smooth lines of his limbs every time he leaps and rolls across a rooftop. Altaïr argues with him every step of the way on acting choices and gives him exactly what he needs, in the end. 

(There are Kadar’s fingerprints on every frame, though only Malik can tell.)

\--

It’s a shock when he goes through the script and the storyboards and realizes that they have it all. That there’s nothing left to shoot. It’s all there, and it just needs to be refined. 

The crew party is a complete debacle, of course, and he gets very, very drunk and professes his love for the entire crew, because holy shit, they’ve been here through the whole damn thing, through the screw-ups and the hippopotamuses, and he can’t believe it. 

“That’s it,” he says, leaning on Altaïr’s shoulder as they wander back from the bar. “It’s done. Or not really. There’s more to do, but nothing where I need to deal with you.”

Altaïr snorts and hitches him higher up on his shoulder. “I’m going to steal my sword from the props department, just for that.”

“You’re too attached to that thing. There’s method acting, and there’s just being crazy, you know,” Malik says. “Also, you could be stealthier about it.”

“Consider it payment for my amazing professional skills.”

Malik is far too drunk for this conversation, but he pulls away from Altaïr’s shoulder, standing straight. He doesn’t like owing people, is the thing. Doesn’t like feeling like this was charity. “Look, I appreciate you doing this—this thing, even if it hasn’t been the most paying job. I can’t promise that it’ll succeed, because maybe it’ll crash and burn, but it’s been—“

Altaïr looks awkward, shifting from foot to foot and his jaw working, but reaches out for him when Malik tips sideways. “Look, if you don’t want me taking the sword—“

Malik grips his arm, because Altaïr doesn’t understand that he’s trying to get at something. “It’s been an honour working with you,” he says, looking Altaïr right in the eye, until he catches himself tipping sideways again.

Altaïr gapes at him, and there’s a blush riding high on his cheeks. Malik has captured him angry, bleeding, tired, wrung-out with sorrow, tense with frustration, and he wishes he had a camera now, because he’s never seen that expression before, which seems strange, but there’s no camera between them here.

“You too?” Altaïr says at last, and Malik might be laughing a bit, because it still seems all so ridiculous and unbelievable that they’ve done this.

\--

Maria makes him argue for every piece of footage in the editing process, paring the film down to its essentials. They have so much raw footage to go through, and every bit has its merits, and it’s just then that he realizes how many years he’s been working on this.

Malik finds himself blinking awake in the editing room, where he had sworn he had just closed his eyes for a second. It takes a moment to register Altaïr’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake hesitantly.

Even though Altaïr had to do a couple of pick-ups, there’s no reason for him to be around anymore, not until the publicity circuit starts. 

“Come to make sure I get your good side in?” Malik says through a yawn, feeling his back crack when he stretches.

“I’m nothing but good sides,” Altaïr says. He narrows his eyes at the screens as the footage starts again. “Did you have to choose that take, though?” 

It’s not really a complaint, because Altaïr can tell as well as Malik that it has to be that one: thirty-nine of forty-four, right before they started losing their light. 

The footage is looping on itself on the screen in front of him, a scene from the beginning, though it’s actually the last thing they shot: a sequence closing with a tight close-up of Altaïr’s strong profile backlit by the sun as he heaves for breath, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He's all kinetic planes, lines, and angles cut out in negative space and barely contained by the frame. 

There’s the leap, and there’s the stumble moments after, and it’s that beat of vulnerability that makes the choreography sing. When Altaïr adjusts his collar after steadying himself, it should be an insufferable flourish, but it translates instead to an easy, unconscious grace. 

Malik isn’t one to ask for too many takes, not when he can get it in a few good ones. But he had retaken this one over and over again, not sure what he was searching for, but unwilling to let it go, and Altaïr had given it again and again, asking for still another even after they all knew it was in the can.

Or maybe Malik has just been staring at the screen too long. He rubs his fingers into his sockets.

“I’m so tired of looking at your face, you know,” Malik says. It’s very weak, and Altaïr knows it, grinning at him and holding up a bag of Chinese takeout.

They end up eating it on Altaïr’s awful, lumpy couch while watching some terrible reality show with cupcakes. (Altaïr could definitely afford a better couch. Malik has no idea why he still keeps it around. He says as much, and Altaïr shrugs and says he likes it. Altair’s idea of decor can generously be labelled ‘eclectic’, down to the coffee table with the short leg propped up by Sontag, and the sword hanging on the wall beside the fridge fits right in.)

There’s still so much to do. The sound mixing, color adjustments, a few cg things that Malik couldn’t figure out how to fake, all the post-prod details that make the film what it should be, and countless other things, along with simply fiddling with it until it feels right, feels whole. 

For now, though, Malik lets himself slowly slump back into the couch until he’s lying back full-length, his fried rice abandoned on the table and his feet in Altaïr’s lap.

\--

When the lights fall in the theatre at last and Malik’s knuckles go white from gripping the armrest tightly enough to creak, he feels Altaïr’s starched cuff brush against his own, and Altair's fingers fumble for his in the dark before finding them and squeezing his hand briefly.

The projector rolls.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine that Malik is filming some crazywonderful mix of AC1 and The Fall.


End file.
